ACGME chooses five residents for David C. Leach Award
New award honors residents who have improved graduate medical education, fostered innovation

CHICAGO, Sept. 25, 2009 – The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education has announced the recipients of the first annual David C. Leach Award. The new annual award honors notable residents who have improved learning, fostered innovation, increased communication, made processes more efficient, or advanced humanism in health care. The award is named in honor of the ACGME’s former chief executive officer, David C. Leach, MD, who retired in 2007.

The awardees will receive a plaque and a check for $2,500, and will be invited to attend an awards luncheon at the 2010 ACGME Annual Educational Conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

The following residents are this year’s David C. Leach Award recipients:

• Omar Bhutta, MD, pediatrics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
• Jenny Han, MD, internal medicine, Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, Michigan
• Kyla Terhune, MD, general surgery, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee
• David Turner, MD, pediatrics, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
• Christopher Young, MD, neonatal-perinatal medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida

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The ACGME is a private, non-profit council that accredits approximately 8,500 residency programs in 127 specialties and subspecialties educating 108,000 residents. Its mission is to improve health care by assessing and advancing the quality of resident physicians’ education through accreditation.